Yes, there are many examples of freedom of expression being squashed in the US. But to imply "Only in America..." Wait, *seriously*? You *HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT*? C'mon!
But America used to be a country you could respect. Wasn't it once?
Good point-you can buy all Exxon products from more responsible companies. If Exxon realizes its actions are bad publicity (and more importantly can hurt profits), it might change policies.
Yes, yes you could stop buying things like gas altogether, but that's not always feasable. Someone who invested in a hybrid car still must buy some gas. Might as well send the profits to someone willing to spend some of it in a socially useful instead of destructive way.
Some rankings from a quick search, I have no idea of the quality of the site.
btw, in Collapse Jared Diamond contrasted environmental policies of some oil companies. Anyone remember which they were? I don't have the book handy as a reference.
ps Paranoia:
My internet connection went down twice as soon as I tried to post the comment above. I would like to change my opinion to buying Exxon's products to support their important anti-parody activities and compliment them for promoting discussion of the world-wide, cross-cultural conspicary of climate scientists thwarting the principles of the scientific method to promote global warming propoganda.
The second stage of this is the fractional reserve banking system. This is perhaps the biggest scam ever created. The fractional reserve banking system allows commercial banks to loan out to people more money than they have in reserve. Hence "fractional reserve" Typically they can loan out up to 20 times more than they have in deposits. That is they only have to have on hand about 5% on average of what they are allowed to loan out.
If a bank had to cover all loans with real money they would have to charge about 20X the interest rate on their loans. That would devastate a country and only allow the already wealthy to start a business (kinda like before banks existed.)
This isn't a scam - its the same thing as internet providers not having sufficient bandwidth to cover all their customers using maximum bandwidth simultaneously. It would be bad business sense to overbuild to that level when all you need is enough bandwidth that your customers will not hit the limits. Just like every insurance company would go bankrupt if the had to pay out every single plan simultaneously.
It's not like we don't buy American media right now, although Canadian artists will be very happy if American companies quit selling their products here. If you refuse to allow legal sale of your product in our country, are we under any obligation at all to respect your IP rights?
Battlestar Galactica is filmed in Vancouver.
Canadian artists and technicians would be very unhappy indeed if american and other world-traders were to pull media production out of Canada.
I thought the higher Canadian dollar was already hurting the Vancouver film industry.
My point was that Canadians already buy so much American art that we artificially impose 'Canadian content' laws. So the threat is to spend more government money enforcing laws benefiting a foreign country or we'll stop selling here so you don't need to spend money on Canadian artists.
You're doing the standard PTO evidence-free hand waving. We can't even measure success let alone evaluate whether the IP law we currently have is better than the virtually infinite number of possible alternatives, including no patents at all. It would great to see even basic science driving the high impact decisions about what forms of IP law to create, if any.
You haven't given any evidence either, but I'm not even sure we disagree. I was protesting the idea that IP laws cannot and have not been used to promote innovation. The real problem now is that 'not obvious to someone skilled in the art or craft' seems to have become interpreted as 'not obvious to the average, unskilled 8 year old'.
But, for example, much fewer drugs would exist without patents. There are currently many promising drug candidates that are not patentable. Right now they are sitting in the situation that would exist if IP laws for drugs did not exist. The result is almost no research into these at all. A small amount is done with public money, such as at universities, but the amounts are pathetic compared to what drug companies throw around. No one drops 3/4 of a billion dollars without expecting a return. Politicians know there are cheaper ways to buy votes. As it is, drug companies are having trouble justifying spending that kind of money because drug resistance tends to cut out profits within 5-10 years.
The current Canadian government (Conservative) is well known for emulating the Bush administration in style and method
I think this is going to destroy Harper, he's scaring the hell out of people with actual conservative beliefs as opposed to Bush style beliefs (Theocratic-Fascist?). Then again, I never would have imagined a creationist museum in Canada, so maybe he's on to something.
Was I just deluded as a child when I believed America was a land that valued freedom and Canadians could mock their ignorance?
I would put forth that it is entirely their right who they want to distribute their IP to. Because they don't want to sell it to us does not give us the right to violate their rights.
But do they have any rights in a foreign country?
IP laws exist and are enforced by public money to benefit the public. That they do this by giving powers to the creator is incidental. In the case of trade, countries must respect each others laws, so I understand it. However in the case that the creator has removed themselves from the foreign market, they cannot receive any compensation or incentive. The public can benefit from the work only by ignoring the IP rights of the creator. Since the only purpose of IP is to promote useful works to the public, the creator is no longer entitled to receive protection by public money.
Similar to the idea that a company that patents an AIDS vaccine could choose not to sell it to African countries for say racist reasons (to make the case more clear cut). African governments are obligated to their citizens, not the sentiments of foreigners and should violate these patents. Much like how the US violated patents when it was a young country.
The, as you call it, "more American nation", will bring with it more American business to Canada. That is why countries join these various trade organizations and ratify treaties.
Just one question, how will this bring more business to Canada? It's not like we don't buy American media right now, although Canadian artists will be very happy if American companies quit selling their products here. If you refuse to allow legal sale of your product in our country, are we under any obligation at all to respect your IP rights?
I think software patents are ultimately the issue that most people have the most problems with.
Software patents are a serious problem, but they are not the only issue.
The IP consensus in the Real World (outside Slashdot) is very cultish and 'faith-based'.
It might have something to do with it being a very successful method. Can you really point to many(any?) examples where IP is unsuccessful and yet had been properly applied? By properly applied I mean applied in such a way to promote innovation (which is the only point of IP laws).
Most of those Real World proponents you refer to only think they believe in IP laws. They actually believe in using lawyers to competitive advantage, which is not the same thing.
Re:Low energy efficiency, high cost
on
Vertical Farming
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Trucks are effectively subsidized because truckers don't pay for the road (or at least, not nearly their share.)
Even if the curve is exponential, it doesn't mean we can't sustain it.
Quite correct. It means that it cannot be sustained with finite resources, such as a planet or solar system. With infinite resources many things become possible.
If the people are hungry, figure a way they can feed themselves. If that means skyscraper farms, or floating farms over the 70% of the Earth that's covered in seawater, then that's what it means.
Ever notice only populations without serious growth ever think of these things. The solutions of fast growing populations have always been war, famine, disease, genocide or curbing population growth.
The 'people will figure out a way' solution to population problems ignores a critical truth; that's only true if economic growth is growing at least as fast as population growth. If that's not the case, it's not sustainable.
So where do you draw the line when games cross from entertainment into objectionable content?
There is no entertainment value to be gotten from them except for people who need help.
The line is simple; when REAL people get hurt. Unless you believe the government should enforce what is moral, in which case you do not believe in freedom. Slavery, witch burnings, racism, etc. were all opinions that majorities of populations have felt were moral.
Right now the really popular ones get enough to keep them well-supplied with mansions, drugs, and hookers, whereas less-popular ones get nothing.
This is an arguement for the current model? Or for spending more tax-payers money on enforcing laws to support the buisinesses that support the current model because that's more efficient than just giving tax-money straight to artists? I didn't even like the idea, but since you put it that way...
Rampant piracy must have severely hampered the market for porn by your logic. Once it could be easily duplicated, no one could make money from it anymore. Did the whole buisness model collapse? Is there more or less quantity and variety of porn?
The big lie, that is counter to the most basic micro-economic principles is that every copy was a lost sale. The people making these claims are either out-right lying or so incredibly ignorant of buisiness priciples that its no surprise they would be in trouble.
Also consider this, why would record companies pay large amounts of money to US radio stations to play their songs? Shouldn't radio stations be the ones paying? There are other factors here.
Have these media distribution companies EVER been correct/honest about the effects of copying? So far they've claimed VCRs would destroy the movie industry and cassette tapes would destroy the music buisiness. Now they say digital is different. So the typical mp3s/movies traded on the internet are equal quality to what they sell? Well, they do seem to be trying to lower the quality of their products...
Remember society created these laws to benefit society and that is the only obligation. Whether it harms or helps a particular buisiness model is irrelevent.
Now maybe their buisiness model really does help make more/higher quality art available to the public, but one final question should be considered. Why are they trying so hard to convince the public and politicians with flawed buisiness logic and making it so hard to make a fair assessment?
Is the consensus of computer scientists on software patents better or worse than the average politicians knowledge?
Sorry but people who devote their lives to the study of climate are better informed than those who don't. Their opinion is more valuble because they are the experts. These are scientists, not environmentalists.
Try another example, the vast majority automotive engineers have a consensus that a particular car design is a death trap prone to explosion. The company that makes the car, the media and a small number of automotive engineers say otherwise. The population at large is undecided. Which opinion do you trust?
What if the majority is wrong? Well the scientific method was specifically designed to prevent an established majority belief from preventing an unpopular but true idea from emerging. Dogma is in direct opposition to the entire philosophy of science. If this was not the case, quantum mechanics would not be a scientific theory today. Neither would wave-particle duality. There is no giant, world-wide cross cultural conspiracy of scientists working against the very basic philosophical principles of science to crush opposing theories. Opposing theories merely require better evidence to become a 'consensus' view.
Let's compare media with scientists. The media reacted to the global cooling/coming ice-age theory similarly to global warming today. The climate scientists did not take it seriously, because there was little evidence. All that hype was based a single, first publication of one scientist. This same scientist published a new paper within several years suggesting that global warming would actually occur instead because he had under-estimated the effects of carbon-dioxide. Yet this crap is still spouted by skeptics today.
What about the dangers of a small group of self-appointed experts with an agenda distorting the truth? Oh wait, that's what the IPCC was created to prevent! But they're still not giving the answer we want.
What about the Skeptical Environmentalist? From the man who repeatedly slammed environmentalists for distorting facts and data, states Kyoto would incredibly expensive and ineffective and yet stated that evidence for man-made climate change was so over-whelming that it was strange the issue was even debated. This was back in 2001. There has been a great deal of evidence since.
'Climate-change skeptics' are the faith based believers.
This 'doubt' propaganda they are spreading is not helping their cause either. Because it's such obvious bullshit to anyone who bases belief on well researched evidence, their opinions are being ignored by knowledgeable people. Unfortunately, legitimate concerns about the cost and effectiveness of proposed climate change prevention policies are not taken seriously because it is assumed they come from this same group who are invulnerable to evidence based trends and obsessed with the details of noise involved in any large data set.
So instead of worrying about commercial whaling in Japan, scientific reports that fish stock levels are universally at about 1% of the natural levels instead of the 10% they thought it was at or that the toxin levels of these animals has built up so high that Inuit breast milk is considered dangerous, you are worried about a heavily regulated, traditional, non-commercial whaling of a population that has been increasing since commercial whaling stopped? The effect of the Inuit is negligible, it was wiping out 60% of the population in two decades of commercial whaling that started the problems and environmental/habitat problems that are the concern now.
Sorry, but I feel your sentiments are being directed in a direction counter to your goals and towards people who probably have less total influence on whale survival than you do, even if their influence is more direct.
As a side note, this is interesting because they can date the manufacture of the spearhead very well. There have been other, probably older, examples of traditional ivory spearheads found recently in some of these whales. This is confirming what these natives have traditionally claimed about these whales; that they live for about as long as 2 human lifetimes.
Which also means that these armed citizen analogies were with people living in fundamentally different situations than say the current USA. So we have the same problem, lack of good historic analogies and lack of evidence to date.
True, but I'm making a prediction of future behavior based on the overwhelmingly consistent past behavior regardless of government type.
Very few government types are represented. How old is communism? You could look at the past and say access to education has little bearing on the success of a country or that invading countries is lucrative to the victors. These are false analogies. I do think there is some truth to these arguements, but the situations are so different that they are very weak.
An interesting view I've heard is that democracies were essentially impossible before there is a mass media. To function, the voters of a democracy need information to make a decision. In cases where mass media can be easily controlled, 'democracies' function much more like empires.
I never thought democracies were immune to becoming oppressive; I just worry about different things. The USA came dangerously close (still is?) to removing most of the features to prevent abusive governments from taking over. Whatever Bush's intentions, he almost made it so after a single terrorist infiltrated the government, the terrorist could then spy without warrants to find whatever patriot is figuring their plot out, arrest him without due process so they can't tell anyone and even ship them off to be tortured until they say what they want them to. I'm not sure enough Americans would even figure out their democracy was gone in time to lead an armed revolt.
There has not been a mass shooting since.
This is largely anecdotal, for example the Columbine shooters planned for months and even created a wide array of home made explosives. Even without guns they could have done some serious damage. And who knows, maybe they would blown up the whole school?
There are some statistical problems but I really think 13 incidents covering periods over 10 years and a drastic changes correlating with changes in gun laws should at least spark some investigation. I don't think their society changed drastically in the past ten years, but I don't live there.
As for the specific Columbine case, I think it was also unusual because there were two of them. So, yes, a particular incident may not be prevented by gun laws but the overall number can be lowered, as hinted at from Australia's results. As you pointed out, explosives can be made very easily, are incredibly difficult to control and can also be used to fight oppressive governments which lessens the need for citizens to have guns.
Convenience matters. Having guns in easy reach in all bars will increase murders. Most of those would be murders will not track you home and blow up your house, although some might.
We can also look at Canada, a very well armed society with none of the mass shootings problems faced by the U.S. Could it be possible this is a societal problem and not a gun problem? Actually Canada has had mass shootings like the female engineering students in Montreal. Gun control is again very problematic though, as the vast majority of guns used in crimes were smuggled in from the USA.
If this is a societal problem, violence should be increasing, not decreasing and should be unaffected by changing gun laws.
In a democracy you can vote people out of power. Historically there have not been many democracies so far.
I'll believe this type of argument if say the US citizens use guns to revolt instead of voting out the current party.
If you really believe this, wouldn't citizens owning nuclear weapons just accelerate the process, or do you think there should be limits on the destructive power a single person should have?
Yes, democracy may prove as a greater buffer to said cycles...we really don't know though since it has only been in the most recent generation that anything approaching a true democracy has existed.
Which also means that these armed citizen analogies were with people living in fundamentally different situations than say the current USA. So we have the same problem, lack of good historic analogies and lack of evidence to date.
There are many who support the idea that democracies never war with each other either, however this suffers the same problem...just too soon to tell.
Why would they never war? I'm not sure I understand the logic behind this.
Maybe they mean that with modern world-wide trade, countries can fight with trade sanctions and deals and such. Wars between such countries are not profitable like they used to be when raping and pillaging the enemy was accepted. Countries that don't trade, don't have these ties and are much more dangerous. But this deals with trade, not democracy directly.
As far as nuclear weapons, I don't even think governments should possess these and I think that modern history has shown that a well armed populace serves as an adequate deterrent to long term oppression by the state. No need for Mig jets in every back yard.
Now you can start talking about what a reasonable level of fire-power is given the trade-offs. In the 18 years prior to 1997 there had been 13 mass shootings in Australia. The last one was about the size of Virgina tech incident. As a result they put controls on pump-action shotguns, assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols. There has not been a mass shooting since. Maybe a devoted sociopath or terrorist will always acquire extremely dangerous illegal weapons, but it doesn't seem like you're typical murderous lunatic has the patience and/or ability to get them before they go on a rampage. Maybe this is acceptable because they will be much more effective for the purposes you described, but it should be discussed fairly.
Overall violence (such as rape and murder) in North America has been dropping significantly for many years. Only things like mass shootings have increased. I think that's more consistent with individuals getting better guns or better training through video games (meaning things like Duck Hunt are more dangerous than any game aimed with a mouse), rather than society becoming more violent because of media exposure.
But when it comes to profit vs. principle, it seems to hit a wall. Is this the reason markets can't stop human trafficing and a gov't has to step in. Any of you collije edumacated E-conomists want to correct me here?
That's exactly right, whatever is more profitable wins. If being ethical lowers your profits compared to competitors(say by paying minimum wage instead of using slavery), ethical companies will naturally be driven out of business. I think Henry Ford was actually sued by his share-holders for paying a fair wage instead of a minimum wage.
One way out is if being ethical has an advertising effect. For example, consumers will pay more for environmentally friendly products (or ones they think are environmentally friendly). This is a case where ethical offers a competitive advantage though. An if its more profitable to be unethical and just use the extra profits for advertising/propaganda to seem more ethical.
Companies were never supposed be ethical in capitalism, that's how things were supposed to work in communism. Government regulation is needed to make unethical behavior unprofitable and is actually needed for markets to run efficiently. The government interfered as soon as it said I couldn't shoot my competitors or their wives, children and customers to give me a competitive advantage. Now since governments seem to do things as incompetently as possible, you might want to keep their interference to a minimum, but people arguing for no interference at all don't understand how markets work.
I like to explain that I'm a carnivore, of ecological grounds. After all, if you want a balanced ecology, you need a small population of carnivores to eat the vegetarians and keep their population in check. This gets me some funny looks, but so far nobody has tried to argue against me. So you eat excess vermin like say mice or rats and not things that are in shortage like fish or have to have populations artificially inflated like cows, pigs or chickens?
That is very ethical. Through that in the faces of the vegans.
Slashdot Mirror
But America used to be a country you could respect. Wasn't it once?
Good point-you can buy all Exxon products from more responsible companies. If Exxon realizes its actions are bad publicity (and more importantly can hurt profits), it might change policies.
Yes, yes you could stop buying things like gas altogether, but that's not always feasable. Someone who invested in a hybrid car still must buy some gas. Might as well send the profits to someone willing to spend some of it in a socially useful instead of destructive way.
Some rankings from a quick search, I have no idea of the quality of the site.
http://www.betterworldhandbook.com/gasoline.html
btw, in Collapse Jared Diamond contrasted environmental policies of some oil companies. Anyone remember which they were? I don't have the book handy as a reference.
ps Paranoia:
My internet connection went down twice as soon as I tried to post the comment above. I would like to change my opinion to buying Exxon's products to support their important anti-parody activities and compliment them for promoting discussion of the world-wide, cross-cultural conspicary of climate scientists thwarting the principles of the scientific method to promote global warming propoganda.
here's one:
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstra ct/153/1/27
If a bank had to cover all loans with real money they would have to charge about 20X the interest rate on their loans. That would devastate a country and only allow the already wealthy to start a business (kinda like before banks existed.)
This isn't a scam - its the same thing as internet providers not having sufficient bandwidth to cover all their customers using maximum bandwidth simultaneously. It would be bad business sense to overbuild to that level when all you need is enough bandwidth that your customers will not hit the limits. Just like every insurance company would go bankrupt if the had to pay out every single plan simultaneously.
Guilty until proven innocent?
I believe the age of consent has just recently been raised to 16.
Battlestar Galactica is filmed in Vancouver.
Canadian artists and technicians would be very unhappy indeed if american and other world-traders were to pull media production out of Canada.
I thought the higher Canadian dollar was already hurting the Vancouver film industry.
My point was that Canadians already buy so much American art that we artificially impose 'Canadian content' laws. So the threat is to spend more government money enforcing laws benefiting a foreign country or we'll stop selling here so you don't need to spend money on Canadian artists.
You're doing the standard PTO evidence-free hand waving. We can't even measure success let alone evaluate whether the IP law we currently have is better than the virtually infinite number of possible alternatives, including no patents at all. It would great to see even basic science driving the high impact decisions about what forms of IP law to create, if any.
You haven't given any evidence either, but I'm not even sure we disagree. I was protesting the idea that IP laws cannot and have not been used to promote innovation. The real problem now is that 'not obvious to someone skilled in the art or craft' seems to have become interpreted as 'not obvious to the average, unskilled 8 year old'.
But, for example, much fewer drugs would exist without patents. There are currently many promising drug candidates that are not patentable. Right now they are sitting in the situation that would exist if IP laws for drugs did not exist. The result is almost no research into these at all. A small amount is done with public money, such as at universities, but the amounts are pathetic compared to what drug companies throw around. No one drops 3/4 of a billion dollars without expecting a return. Politicians know there are cheaper ways to buy votes. As it is, drug companies are having trouble justifying spending that kind of money because drug resistance tends to cut out profits within 5-10 years.
The current Canadian government (Conservative) is well known for emulating the Bush administration in style and method
I think this is going to destroy Harper, he's scaring the hell out of people with actual conservative beliefs as opposed to Bush style beliefs (Theocratic-Fascist?). Then again, I never would have imagined a creationist museum in Canada, so maybe he's on to something.
Was I just deluded as a child when I believed America was a land that valued freedom and Canadians could mock their ignorance?
But do they have any rights in a foreign country? IP laws exist and are enforced by public money to benefit the public. That they do this by giving powers to the creator is incidental. In the case of trade, countries must respect each others laws, so I understand it. However in the case that the creator has removed themselves from the foreign market, they cannot receive any compensation or incentive. The public can benefit from the work only by ignoring the IP rights of the creator. Since the only purpose of IP is to promote useful works to the public, the creator is no longer entitled to receive protection by public money.
Similar to the idea that a company that patents an AIDS vaccine could choose not to sell it to African countries for say racist reasons (to make the case more clear cut). African governments are obligated to their citizens, not the sentiments of foreigners and should violate these patents. Much like how the US violated patents when it was a young country.
Maybe I'm thinking theory and not reality.
Just one question, how will this bring more business to Canada? It's not like we don't buy American media right now, although Canadian artists will be very happy if American companies quit selling their products here. If you refuse to allow legal sale of your product in our country, are we under any obligation at all to respect your IP rights?
Software patents are a serious problem, but they are not the only issue.
The IP consensus in the Real World (outside Slashdot) is very cultish and 'faith-based'.
It might have something to do with it being a very successful method. Can you really point to many(any?) examples where IP is unsuccessful and yet had been properly applied? By properly applied I mean applied in such a way to promote innovation (which is the only point of IP laws).
Most of those Real World proponents you refer to only think they believe in IP laws. They actually believe in using lawyers to competitive advantage, which is not the same thing.
Trucks are effectively subsidized because truckers don't pay for the road (or at least, not nearly their share.)
Quite correct. It means that it cannot be sustained with finite resources, such as a planet or solar system. With infinite resources many things become possible.
If the people are hungry, figure a way they can feed themselves. If that means skyscraper farms, or floating farms over the 70% of the Earth that's covered in seawater, then that's what it means.Ever notice only populations without serious growth ever think of these things. The solutions of fast growing populations have always been war, famine, disease, genocide or curbing population growth.
The 'people will figure out a way' solution to population problems ignores a critical truth; that's only true if economic growth is growing at least as fast as population growth. If that's not the case, it's not sustainable.
No. They're run by politicians
There is no entertainment value to be gotten from them except for people who need help.
The line is simple; when REAL people get hurt. Unless you believe the government should enforce what is moral, in which case you do not believe in freedom. Slavery, witch burnings, racism, etc. were all opinions that majorities of populations have felt were moral.This is an arguement for the current model? Or for spending more tax-payers money on enforcing laws to support the buisinesses that support the current model because that's more efficient than just giving tax-money straight to artists? I didn't even like the idea, but since you put it that way ...
The big lie, that is counter to the most basic micro-economic principles is that every copy was a lost sale. The people making these claims are either out-right lying or so incredibly ignorant of buisiness priciples that its no surprise they would be in trouble.
Also consider this, why would record companies pay large amounts of money to US radio stations to play their songs? Shouldn't radio stations be the ones paying? There are other factors here.
Have these media distribution companies EVER been correct/honest about the effects of copying? So far they've claimed VCRs would destroy the movie industry and cassette tapes would destroy the music buisiness. Now they say digital is different. So the typical mp3s/movies traded on the internet are equal quality to what they sell? Well, they do seem to be trying to lower the quality of their products ...
Remember society created these laws to benefit society and that is the only obligation. Whether it harms or helps a particular buisiness model is irrelevent.
Now maybe their buisiness model really does help make more/higher quality art available to the public, but one final question should be considered. Why are they trying so hard to convince the public and politicians with flawed buisiness logic and making it so hard to make a fair assessment?
Sorry but people who devote their lives to the study of climate are better informed than those who don't. Their opinion is more valuble because they are the experts. These are scientists, not environmentalists.
Try another example, the vast majority automotive engineers have a consensus that a particular car design is a death trap prone to explosion. The company that makes the car, the media and a small number of automotive engineers say otherwise. The population at large is undecided. Which opinion do you trust?
What if the majority is wrong? Well the scientific method was specifically designed to prevent an established majority belief from preventing an unpopular but true idea from emerging. Dogma is in direct opposition to the entire philosophy of science. If this was not the case, quantum mechanics would not be a scientific theory today. Neither would wave-particle duality. There is no giant, world-wide cross cultural conspiracy of scientists working against the very basic philosophical principles of science to crush opposing theories. Opposing theories merely require better evidence to become a 'consensus' view.
Let's compare media with scientists. The media reacted to the global cooling/coming ice-age theory similarly to global warming today. The climate scientists did not take it seriously, because there was little evidence. All that hype was based a single, first publication of one scientist. This same scientist published a new paper within several years suggesting that global warming would actually occur instead because he had under-estimated the effects of carbon-dioxide. Yet this crap is still spouted by skeptics today.
What about the dangers of a small group of self-appointed experts with an agenda distorting the truth? Oh wait, that's what the IPCC was created to prevent! But they're still not giving the answer we want.
What about the Skeptical Environmentalist? From the man who repeatedly slammed environmentalists for distorting facts and data, states Kyoto would incredibly expensive and ineffective and yet stated that evidence for man-made climate change was so over-whelming that it was strange the issue was even debated. This was back in 2001. There has been a great deal of evidence since.
'Climate-change skeptics' are the faith based believers.
This 'doubt' propaganda they are spreading is not helping their cause either. Because it's such obvious bullshit to anyone who bases belief on well researched evidence, their opinions are being ignored by knowledgeable people. Unfortunately, legitimate concerns about the cost and effectiveness of proposed climate change prevention policies are not taken seriously because it is assumed they come from this same group who are invulnerable to evidence based trends and obsessed with the details of noise involved in any large data set.
Sorry, but I feel your sentiments are being directed in a direction counter to your goals and towards people who probably have less total influence on whale survival than you do, even if their influence is more direct.
As a side note, this is interesting because they can date the manufacture of the spearhead very well. There have been other, probably older, examples of traditional ivory spearheads found recently in some of these whales. This is confirming what these natives have traditionally claimed about these whales; that they live for about as long as 2 human lifetimes.
Very few government types are represented. How old is communism? You could look at the past and say access to education has little bearing on the success of a country or that invading countries is lucrative to the victors. These are false analogies. I do think there is some truth to these arguements, but the situations are so different that they are very weak.
An interesting view I've heard is that democracies were essentially impossible before there is a mass media. To function, the voters of a democracy need information to make a decision. In cases where mass media can be easily controlled, 'democracies' function much more like empires.
I never thought democracies were immune to becoming oppressive; I just worry about different things. The USA came dangerously close (still is?) to removing most of the features to prevent abusive governments from taking over. Whatever Bush's intentions, he almost made it so after a single terrorist infiltrated the government, the terrorist could then spy without warrants to find whatever patriot is figuring their plot out, arrest him without due process so they can't tell anyone and even ship them off to be tortured until they say what they want them to. I'm not sure enough Americans would even figure out their democracy was gone in time to lead an armed revolt.
This is largely anecdotal, for example the Columbine shooters planned for months and even created a wide array of home made explosives. Even without guns they could have done some serious damage. And who knows, maybe they would blown up the whole school?There are some statistical problems but I really think 13 incidents covering periods over 10 years and a drastic changes correlating with changes in gun laws should at least spark some investigation. I don't think their society changed drastically in the past ten years, but I don't live there.
As for the specific Columbine case, I think it was also unusual because there were two of them. So, yes, a particular incident may not be prevented by gun laws but the overall number can be lowered, as hinted at from Australia's results. As you pointed out, explosives can be made very easily, are incredibly difficult to control and can also be used to fight oppressive governments which lessens the need for citizens to have guns.
Convenience matters. Having guns in easy reach in all bars will increase murders. Most of those would be murders will not track you home and blow up your house, although some might.
We can also look at Canada, a very well armed society with none of the mass shootings problems faced by the U.S. Could it be possible this is a societal problem and not a gun problem? Actually Canada has had mass shootings like the female engineering students in Montreal. Gun control is again very problematic though, as the vast majority of guns used in crimes were smuggled in from the USA.If this is a societal problem, violence should be increasing, not decreasing and should be unaffected by changing gun laws.
Yes, democracy may prove as a greater buffer to said cycles...we really don't know though since it has only been in the most recent generation that anything approaching a true democracy has existed.
Which also means that these armed citizen analogies were with people living in fundamentally different situations than say the current USA. So we have the same problem, lack of good historic analogies and lack of evidence to date.
There are many who support the idea that democracies never war with each other either, however this suffers the same problem...just too soon to tell.Why would they never war? I'm not sure I understand the logic behind this.
Maybe they mean that with modern world-wide trade, countries can fight with trade sanctions and deals and such. Wars between such countries are not profitable like they used to be when raping and pillaging the enemy was accepted. Countries that don't trade, don't have these ties and are much more dangerous. But this deals with trade, not democracy directly.
As far as nuclear weapons, I don't even think governments should possess these and I think that modern history has shown that a well armed populace serves as an adequate deterrent to long term oppression by the state. No need for Mig jets in every back yard.
Now you can start talking about what a reasonable level of fire-power is given the trade-offs. In the 18 years prior to 1997 there had been 13 mass shootings in Australia. The last one was about the size of Virgina tech incident. As a result they put controls on pump-action shotguns, assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols. There has not been a mass shooting since. Maybe a devoted sociopath or terrorist will always acquire extremely dangerous illegal weapons, but it doesn't seem like you're typical murderous lunatic has the patience and/or ability to get them before they go on a rampage. Maybe this is acceptable because they will be much more effective for the purposes you described, but it should be discussed fairly.Overall violence (such as rape and murder) in North America has been dropping significantly for many years. Only things like mass shootings have increased. I think that's more consistent with individuals getting better guns or better training through video games (meaning things like Duck Hunt are more dangerous than any game aimed with a mouse), rather than society becoming more violent because of media exposure.
That's exactly right, whatever is more profitable wins. If being ethical lowers your profits compared to competitors(say by paying minimum wage instead of using slavery), ethical companies will naturally be driven out of business. I think Henry Ford was actually sued by his share-holders for paying a fair wage instead of a minimum wage.
One way out is if being ethical has an advertising effect. For example, consumers will pay more for environmentally friendly products (or ones they think are environmentally friendly). This is a case where ethical offers a competitive advantage though. An if its more profitable to be unethical and just use the extra profits for advertising/propaganda to seem more ethical.
Companies were never supposed be ethical in capitalism, that's how things were supposed to work in communism. Government regulation is needed to make unethical behavior unprofitable and is actually needed for markets to run efficiently. The government interfered as soon as it said I couldn't shoot my competitors or their wives, children and customers to give me a competitive advantage. Now since governments seem to do things as incompetently as possible, you might want to keep their interference to a minimum, but people arguing for no interference at all don't understand how markets work.
So you eat excess vermin like say mice or rats and not things that are in shortage like fish or have to have populations artificially inflated like cows, pigs or chickens?
That is very ethical. Through that in the faces of the vegans.